New Thoughts (03/03/10-03/06/10)
The first thing that must be said about this passage is that it is a parable. It is not a historical anecdote. This must be made clear. Otherwise, we will join the many who have read far too much into what is written. For instance, I have known those who look at the fact of the poor man being named as proof that this is not a parable at all. But, there is no reason to suppose that is the case. As I will explore further, the significance of his name lies in the name itself, not in his being named and not in the rich man knowing his name.
Another common abuse of this passage lies in the tendency to take it as a geography lesson on the layout of the realms of the afterlife. I will not go so far as to insist that there is no such intermediate locale as is described here, nor shall I insist that the chasm spoken of is in no wise a reality. But, to insist that the figurative imagery of the parable is to be taken as a literal description is to abuse the parable.
Honestly, I am amazed to find so many who think this lays out a doctrinal truth as regards a region known as “Abraham’s bosom” and a region known as “Hades”. Even the lexicons make much of the distinction between that intermediate region referred to as Hades and the final destination of the damned in Gehenna. Admittedly, there are distinctions of meaning in the usage of these two referents to the afterlife. Hades certainly has a more neutral sense to it, simply a place for the dead, while Gehenna is clearly a place for the damned. To further subdivide Hades, though, as we have it depicted here, is not particularly supportable.
Let me just bring out one point from the parable to try and make this clear. Abraham speaks of the great, impassable chasm laid out between his region and that of Hades, and declares that it is there in part in order that “Those who wish to come over from here to you may not be able” (v26). Well, now, consider: if my heart of compassion is moving me to go to the aid of one whom I can see afar off, but I am prevented from going to their aid, is this not a form of torment to me? Should I really suppose that God’s eternal Paradise, the place of my ultimate blessing, is going to be a place of such constant torment, as well?
The counter argument will be made that being in heaven, I shall have no such desire to torment me. But, that makes much the same point as I am making as regards the chasm. See, that argument is saying that just because the parable mentions such a longing does not mean it will truly exist in the heart of any believer. I make the same point as regards the chasm. Just because the parable speaks of this chasm does not require us to accept that there is truly such a physical chasm in our eternal abode, with the damned always there on the horizon for us to watch.
Recall that the parable is a story designed to deliver a point. The details are not to be pushed. The imagery is not to be treated as it would in an allegory, where every person and place and activity is set as representing a higher truth. Parable doesn’t work that way! Indeed, the parable draws upon the common understanding, the obvious beliefs and behaviors of the listener, to make its point. It’s in the nature of, “you know how you would be in this case, and the same applies in the spiritual case.” As such, the imagery of this parable is drawn from the common understanding of the time. It is neither a denunciation nor a proof of those beliefs. It is simply an acknowledgment that such those beliefs are.
Admittedly, part of my aversion to taking the image too literally is an outworking of my Protestant background. The idea of an intermediate state is bothersome to me. It smacks of Purgatory, which is a conception I find insupportable. Of course, the implications of these two concepts differ. Purgatory is set out as a place of the dead in which the final judgment has not necessarily been made. It’s a place to work off the debt of sin before eternity takes hold. This is so thoroughly at odds with the grace of the Gospel that it must be rejected. But, that there might have been a place for the dead prior to the work of the Christ I can almost accept. I say almost, because the only thing that leads me to suppose a need for such a holding chamber is the concept of time. If I hold that God in His heaven is outside of time, which He created, then there is no such need, for He Who sees the end from the beginning dwells in a place where the finished work of Christ is ever so.
Recall that Jesus says, “Before Abraham was born, I AM” (Jn 8:58). This is ever the case with God. It is ever and always, “I AM”. It is not “I was”, it is not “I shall be”. It is an eternal present, because it is outside of time. That being the case, the dead, in whatever era they died, whether before the Ascension or after, need not be suffered to wait for that event, nor for any other. The beginning and the end are of little consequence in heaven, where they are in the same moment, if the concept of moment can be said to apply.
Time is for the benefit of man. In our limited cognition we need this linearity of experience. We are not equipped to perceive the now of eternity. But, where time does not apply, there is no call for a waiting room. There is heaven. There is hell. As you have passed into eternity, you are shown the door you are to pass through and that’s that. There’s no appeals court. There’s no work camp from which one might hope for a reprieve. In that sense, the gulf, the chasm truly is infinitely wide. There is absolutely no possibility of crossing over, not for any purpose.
All this being said, were one to insist in looking upon Hades as such a temporary locale for the dead, I don’t suppose it is a terrible error, so long as one doesn’t wander off into the work-camp idea. But, these considerations remain something of a sidebar to the meat of the message.
That we might approach the main course of the parable, let me look to the name given this poor man. His name was Lazarus, which translated, means “Whom God helps”. Contrast that with the image we are given of the rich man, whom we might say helps himself. Perhaps we could call him Adamarus, or Adamazar, “Whom man helps”. I was actually thinking, “Who helps himself”, but I cannot seem to find a Hebrew word that actually translates ‘himself’. That’s rather interesting in itself. But, let us recognize that the parable is laying out before us two types of people, those who help themselves, and those whom God helps. And between the two, there is indeed such a chasm as can never be crossed.
Alternatively, one might view this teaching as pertaining to the contrasting perceptions of God and man. As men would measure it, the rich man was clearly blessed, and the poor man not so. If one were to seek the religious perspective in this picture, the rich man might possibly be construed as having observed the Law (else why would God bless him), and the poor man would be marked down as unclean, particularly after that business with the dogs.
Of course, we understand that wealth and material abundance do not necessarily mark out a righteous man. Yet, if a wealthy man puts on a good front, we are far more likely to believe him than if it were a destitute soul doing the same. The outward appearance most assuredly has an impact on our judgment. We may master such thinking given time, but there is a reason why society puts such weight on matters of first impressions. God sees the heart, but we still tend to measure by the skin. We still tend to judge by the cover.
It should be made clear that the problem addressed by this parable is not that of wealth or poverty. The point is not to advocate austerity in this life in hopes of that reversal of fortunes in eternity. Those who shape their lives solely on the idea of earning repayment from God are likely fooling themselves. Their motivation is wrong and their outcome far from certain. It was not destitution that brought Lazarus to Abraham’s side. It was faith. “Whom God helps” knows where his help comes from. “Whom God helps” did not lean on his own resources, assuredly, and experience had long since taught him not to lean on the kindness of others. These are weak supports at best, certain to fail. But, God is a strong tower, a sure and faithful Father. In Him we shall trust and hope and have our being. And, should He choose to reward us in His eternal home, praise be to Him and many thanks for the blessing. But, it is nothing for me to boast of. I have done ought to earn what He has so liberally poured out.
The issue here might better be seen as the matter of compassion, for compassion, that active demonstration of mercy, is so thoroughly reflective of God’s essential character. Compassion is the overflow of God’s own infinite mercy shown to us. To have no compassion is to bear no resemblance to the God of heaven. That is the fundamental issue to be found with the rich man of this image. He had the wherewithal to help. He could afford to comfort Lazarus and would not have even noticed the impact on his accounts. Indeed, with this one laid out at his very doorstep day after day, it is unthinkable that he might not have been aware of Lazarus’ plight. No, he was aware. He was, it would seem, so thoroughly familiar with the man as to know his name. Yet, he had done nothing. He had partied in the very sight of this poor, starving brother and had not so much as offered him the leavings, had not so much as kept the dogs off so that he might have what the dogs had instead. No compassion. No godliness, whatever appearances he might have put on at temple.
In his defense, this rich man makes an appeal to legitimacy. As was typical of the Israelite of his time, the key factor to his way of thinking was lineage. He could trace his quite well, thank you very much, and it led right back to Abraham. See, this is what the covenant promises had come to mean to his contemporaries. It wasn’t who you were, it was who your ancestors were. You had a birthright as an Israeli, and nothing you did was going to change that. You could be as criminal and hard hearted as you like, because you were a Jew and heaven was guaranteed.
That same attitude has permeated the Church at times. It still does today. There are those corners of the modern-day religious community which suppose that having been christened into the church, nothing more need be done. Salvation was assured by a drop of water. Such is not the case. There are those who suppose that having once prayed a particular prayer, or filled out a particular form, or what have you, they have done all that was needful to obtain to salvation and can now go on living as they please. Such is not the case.
All of these outward measures of legitimacy are equally worthless. All of these things that set man at the helm of eternal security are worthless. Legitimacy, however we choose to measure it, is not enough. Consider the reply Jesus had made to those Pharisees who tried this same defense against His message. “We are children of Abraham” they declaimed. Jesus’ response was devastating. “If you are Abraham’s children, act like it. Do as he did” (Jn 8:39). Lineage is worthless. One-off, repeat after me prayers are worthless. Whatever ritual men may contrive to make us feel as though we have done the one thing necessary to appease God, they are all worthless. The only thing that matters is God Himself. Whom He has called, He has called as He has predestined, and He has predestined them to be conformed to His Son’s image, as He has foreknown them. Whom He has called, He has justified, and having justified them, He has also glorified them (Ro 8:29-30).
He chose. He determined. He acted. End of story. We can say what we will about how we were looking for Him or not. We can think what we please about how we had to accept what He offered, or not. We can think ourselves Arminian or Calvinist or Baptist or Papist. But, the truth of the matter is simply as Paul teaches, as Jesus teaches: None comes to the Son but those whom the Father calls and none reach the Father except through the Son. Legitimacy is not enough. Lineage is not enough. Circumcision is not enough. Baptism is not enough. It matters little what denomination you adhere to. It is God that matters, and nothing else.
Of course, those who are truly found in that chain of events Paul has proclaimed will find themselves inclined to do the works of salvation, will find themselves bearing the fruits of righteousness. How could it be otherwise when we are branches of the Vine? And, how shall we be branches of the Vine if we will not abide in the Word He has proclaimed?
That thought leads us to the more prophetic aspects of this passage. “If they don’t listen to Moses and they don’t listen to the prophets, then they won’t be persuaded by anything, not even one rising from death.” The aspect of foretelling or foreshadowing in this is plainly obvious to us. Indeed, we could construe it as a double prophecy, speaking both of His own resurrection and that of Lazarus which He accomplished beforehand. For all that, there has already been that other resurrection of the young man from his very casket as his widowed mother was on the way to bury him (Lk 7:11-17). But, the forward looking aspects are more critical to observe here. That one He had raised before was obscure and little known. Lazarus, on the other hand would be heard of by many, as his resurrection would occur right on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and as for Jesus! Well, His resurrection would resound down through the ages, and shake the very foundations of Hades!
But, let’s hear the point that Jesus is making here, because we are dangerously close to making the same sorts of assumptions as this dead man. If they won’t heed the Scriptures, then the greatest of miracles isn’t going to persuade them. What an insurmountable counter argument this presents to those who even today insist that the church must have her miracles or be worthless! The power lies not in the signs and wonders. The power lies in the Word Himself, and in the Scriptures He has imparted to man. The fundamental, salvific message of God is the thing. It is His chosen means by which He imparts His grace to man. All that other stuff, all that eye-candy with which the Church amuses herself, it is vain and empty. It is wind. This does not preclude God from working through our nonsense should He so choose, just as our utterly wretched sinfulness did not preclude Him from saving us. But, it is not the primary means He has assigned. “If they do not listen to the Word, miracles won’t change that.”
This brings me to a deep concern that I find rising in myself as I consider the lesson laid out in this parable, particularly the lesson that concerns the five brothers. For, in them I see the model of the modern church of the West. She no longer listens to the Scriptures, and it may well be that the most powerful and manifest activities of God will do nothing to change that. Nor do I suppose that this issue is restricted to the so-called mainstream denominations. The more in vogue movements of Pentecostalism and the Charismatics are every bit as much in danger of this error, if not more so.
Actually, it raises two problems that are worth noting. The first is that many today would agree with the rich man’s opinion. They would agree that the Church must display miracles to convince the unbelievers. They are of the opinion that arguments from Scripture just aren’t enough, that reason and doctrinal discussions can never win the day. It needs the miraculous, the incredible. It needs verifiable physical healings and raising from death. Surely, such things as this will succeed where reason fails! Indeed, such proponents of the miraculous would as soon see reason struck down entire. Why, reason just gets in the way of faith. And yet, I discover that the Gospel is entirely reasonable. I discover that Paul, the great defender of the Gospel, delivers one of the most reasoned and logical presentations of the salvation message that ever was delivered.
Is there a place for signs and wonders in the Church today? I see no reason to say otherwise. However, to make signs and wonders the focus of the Church is a great mistake. We are raising a generation of believers who believe the signs rather than the God of the signs. And the God we serve has warned in His Word that the antichrist and his collaborators will be presenting plenty of signs and wonders of their own. We simply must get to the understanding that the signs and wonders prove nothing in and of themselves, nor does their absence. The power of God is in God, and it is His to dispense as He pleases. He has declared with sufficient clarity that He is pleased to dispense His power through the revealed Word of Himself. Why are we His children dissatisfied with what He is pleased to give?
However, the greater warning I take from this parable is that which is said of the five brothers. For this also describes the condition of the Church. Even were one to rise from death in our presence, we would not shift our views. It seems to be part of the natural progression of Christian faith that as we grow in faith we also grow in stubbornness as to what we believe to be true. Now, it is abundantly clear from the variety of denominations that exist that our comprehension of Truth remains imperfect. Any open pursuit of the great questions of Belief must recognize that proponents of both sides of any such questions are earnest in their faith, earnest in their desire for Truth. Yet, they have reached opposing conclusions. Clearly, as much as new age philosophy might try to convince us otherwise, one of those conclusions must be wrong. Perhaps both are wrong. But, they cannot possibly both be correct. Yet, those who hold such views will cling to them ‘til death do them part.
This perception has been strong upon me of late, as our men’s group has been studying the book of Romans, which has been at the foundation of so much of Church history. It is a most elegant presentation of the Gospel, and most eloquent. It is carefully laid out with all the rhetorical skill of a master lawyer. Yet, earnest and godly men, studying this text, have reached absolutely opposite conclusions on key aspects of the message presented therein. For my own part, having studied that text in depth many years ago, I found my views radically changed by the effort. If I were to thoroughly over-simplify the effect, I should say that I entered that study an Arminian and came out a Calvinist. Of course, that is far too simplistic a description, but it might reasonably describe the degree of shift in my thinking.
I say that to make this point: The views that I held going into that study, I held as certain. And yet, having completed the study, found I must abandon in favor of other, diametrically opposing views. These new views I have since that time held to be even more certain. Having once found Scripture proving me wrong, I am that much more firmly insistent on what I understand from that experience. However, I can look at others in my acquaintance who have made a progression in the opposite direction. I cannot speak to the causes that have led them to take that road. I cannot say whether they have earnestly considered what the Scriptures seem to me to state most clearly. Honestly, it is an incredibly difficult thing to allow the study of Scripture to form one’s views rather than to have one’s views form the ideas one finds in Scripture.
Consider that today, wherever one looks, one finds Jesus brought out as the proponent of whatever opinion is being given. If it’s a defense of conservative, orthodox forms of belief, why surely Jesus was for it. If it’s a defense of gays in the pulpit, of course Jesus would have accepted that! Whatever it is we want, we’re sure Jesus would have promoted it, and we can probably concoct some sort of defense for our views by careful selection of quotations from the Gospels. Of course, we shall have to unmoor them from any context. Of course, we may have to gloss over vast tracts of the Scriptural landscape to maintain such a view. We may have to suffer a most severe bout of cognitive dissonance to maintain our claim as others point to clearly contravening statements from the Word. But, we hold to those views, and we will not relinquish them, and we will become rather blind to anything that suggests otherwise.
I tell you, it doesn’t matter what angle you’re coming at it from. We get this way. We are about as capable of an unbiased studying of Scripture as the average reporter is capable of an unbiased reporting of the news. It’s not impossible. No! That idea is a particular fallacy of our day and age. But, it’s hard. It takes particular mental rigor to insist on reading what the text says, rather than reading into it what we wish it to say. It’s hard to worship the God Who Is, rather than retouching His image to fit our preferences.
It should be clear enough to us that we are as likely to suffer error in our theology as anybody else. The likelihood that we have got our doctrine 100% correct is approximately nil. Yet, we have our certainty. Yet, we hold to our views as if it is we who are inerrant and not the Scriptures. And I have to wonder: Where we are wrong and deluded, would we be convinced of our mistake were one to rise from the dead? Would we change our understanding even then?
I am by no means suggesting that we should forget all concern for doctrine, that we should hold that nothing really matters so long as we believe on Jesus. How, after all, shall we know Whom we have believed in, if we have no care for what He teaches? How shall we arrive at a lifestyle that reflects His glory and majesty, if we pay no particular heed to what He is like? How shall we determine if we are truly worshiping Jesus or just an idol of our own fashioning? Yes, the danger is that great! Yes, the issue truly is a matter of life and death. How can I possibly stress this enough? If we have come to worship the God of Truth, does it not behoove us to have a deep and abiding concern for knowing the Truth? Do we really suppose we can honor such a God by clinging to our falsehoods? It’s no more possible to do that than to please a God of perfect Holiness by insistently pursuing our sinful ways. It’s no more possible than expecting to be praised by a God of Mercy when we have no compassion in us at all. How shall we be in His Image if we don’t make it our business to know Who He Is?
The sum of Jesus’ message, though, gets me right back to that matter of signs and wonders as a necessary outflow of the true Church. What I read in what Jesus says is of one piece with what I find stated in the footnotes of the NET. “The message of God should be good enough. Scripture is the sign to be heeded.” What a powerful statement that is! Scripture is the sign. What more do you need? My! We already have the writings of the New Testament to add to the advantage that the Jews of Jesus’ day had. And still we’re not satisfied? Still we want something more, something new? We have an additional 2000 years of Church history to draw upon, the scholarship of great men of God who have debated the great issues of theology and doctrine. And we’re still looking to hear some amazing, new, never before heard declaration of the meaning of Scripture every Sunday? What is wrong with us?
Here’s an idea: Let’s consider the message delivered by one of the first great preachers, the Apostle Paul. “Being helped by God, I stand today to testify to the powerless and the great, speaking nothing but what Moses and the prophets proclaimed would take place” (Ac 26:22). In other words: no novelty. No gimmicks. No insistence that the text has been terribly misunderstood for long generations and only now, with the brilliance inherent in this latest generation, has there been a mind capable of truly understanding it. What egos we have to think otherwise! No! The issue has ever and always been one of restoring the ancient ways, of looking to the ancient path. For, God has not changed. The God Who declared “It is good” over the Creation He established is the very same God Who declared from the cross, “It is finished!” Yes, and He is the very same God Who will establish once for all His kingdom upon the new earth and in the new heavens.
As for me, well, I can exult with the Psalmist: “For my part, I shall behold Your face in righteousness, and be satisfied with Your likeness when I arise” (Ps 17:15). What an exciting prospect that is! How can I be so certain of this? Because I know what my God has promised, and I fully understand that it is by and through Him alone that I shall be thus satisfied. Knowing that He Who declared, “It is finished” is the very One Who shall finish it, Who so works in me as to shape my will and my character after His likeness, and Who is faithful to complete that work He has started, I can stand certain that I shall be there in the place we see Lazarus standing. Why? Because He said so. On this doctrine, at least, I doubt I shall find cause to change. It is the very glory of God and the fundamental good news of the Gospel. It is finished and, as He had said all along, it is by His own right hand that it has been accomplished. This is my story and my song, that He has wrought my salvation by His own mighty right arm! And surely, as He Himself has proclaimed, there is none – not even my own foolish self – who can snatch me from His hand.
